Abstract

For Murdoch the importance of the fact–value dichotomy is not to suggest that value is not real. Rather this separation is required in order to keep value pure and untainted with empirical facts. Here Murdoch focuses Kant and Wittgenstein, notably the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. For both, value appears as an intimation of ‘something higher’. And it is here that Murdoch sees the deeper problem with various forms of the fact–value dichotomy: that in our explanations of human life the essential thing, value, must be built into our model or picture from the start if it is to be ultimately integrated into it at all, but that in doing so we may be accused of what Murdoch calls an unwarranted act of faith or intuition.